Oh you guys. You guyyyyyys. Buckle the fuck up, I am so pumped to tell you about this absolutely GONZO mummified deuce of a movie. Spoilers will be had in this one, because you need to know everything.Â
Old is the latest from M. Night Shyamalan and like....I think we all know M. Nightâs track record. For every Sixth Sense, we also get a Happening or a Village. In some ways, heâs the most exciting director working today because every new film is a 50/50 coin toss, and mama loves living on the edge. The gist of this latest roll of the dice is that a group of different families who have all come to stay at a remote luxury beach resort get invited to go to a secluded private beach for the day, and after they arrive they discover they canât leave. Thatâs not great, but the bigger problem is that they seem to be aging rapidly - like 2 years older every hour or so. Thatâs a solid âhow are we gonna get outta this oneâ bottle episode premise, and in the hands of a better writer, it could be a fun sci-fi romp. M. is NOT that writer.Â
I should have known it would all go wrong from the terrible foreshadowing starting at the very beginning scene. The mom of our main family, Prisca (Vicky Krieps) says âYou have such a beautiful voice, I canât wait to hear it when youâre older.â The dad, Guy (Gael Garcia Bernal) says, âDonât rush this moment, enjoy the present while you can.â BECAUSE THE CHARACTERS WONâT BE ABLE TO LATER, DO YOU GET IT? dO yOU GEt iT? Wife leaned over and said âlook at all the ferns - the oldest plants!â That last one was probably her projecting, but the point stands: there is nothing subtle about Old.Â
Thereâs a lot of just like, shouting out loud the things that are currently happening onscreen. âSheâs having a seizure!â âPeople who go back the way we came black out!â âThe rust has entered your bloodstream; it acts like poison!â Thatâs how you tell stories, right? Just having characters point out events that are occurring right in front of their stupid fucking faces with no other commentary or reflection?Â
An additional element that feels woefully ignorant at best and malicious at worst is the inclusion of a black male character (Aaron Pierre) who 1) is a rapper 2) is named Mid-Sized Sedan [Iâll give you a moment to deal with that detail emotionally] 3) says the single line of dialogue âDamn.â at least 4 times and 4) suffers the bloodiest, most violent onscreen death at the hands of a racist white man who is revealed to have paranoid schizophrenia. There are other gruesome deaths onscreen, to be sure, but the worst are body horror nightmares that could never occur in the real world - a woman whose bones are breaking and setting in the wrong position nearly instantaneously until she resembles a horrifying spider creature, and the aforementioned rust-in-the-bloodstream trick that leads to a Jeff-Goldblum-in-The Fly-bubbling-skin infection kinda deal. But Mid-Sized Sedan just gets stabbed in the chest repeatedly, brutally, a bunch of times by a white guy who pleads fear for his life even though MSS posed no danger to him, and it all happens onscreen when so many other characters are offered the mercy of offscreen deaths. Iâm not sure if M. is trying to throw some real-world horror in and heâs just shit at it, or if it really didnât occur to him how malicious this inclusion feels in a fantasy narrative, and I donât really care. If you have a black character in your story and they die, you better think really long and hard about how it happens and what it means and itâs clear no one did that here.
Nothing to do with the film itself, but it did tickle me that someone brought a tiny infant to my pretty packed screening. The baby was very chill, thank goodness, and as far as I know did not age up to a kindergartner during the course of the film.
There is a Very Good Dog, a Yorkie, present for the first part of the film, but unfortunately the dog dies. It occurs offscreen, and given the premise of whatâs going on on this beach, itâs not a shock when it happens BUT STILL.Â
The old age makeup, at least on Prisca is pretty great. Good job makeup department!
At one point, Guy gets attacked by another beachgoer, and his eyesight is failing so he has a hard time fighting back. But you are surrounded by sand, my dude, and you can still see blurry shapes. Youâre not gonna throw some sand in the eyes until youâve been stabbed like 10 times? Not gonna try to push him down, or sweep the fucking leg, or do anything but just keep raising your arms and getting stabbed while yelling âIâll protect you!â Iâve seen stale tuna sandwiches with better defense mechanisms than you.Â
Like most fantastical premises, there are only a certain number of ways this narrative can end that really make any sense. It reminds me quite a bit of 2019âs Brightburn which was like âwhat if Superman but evil?â Either everyone is gonna die, or someone is going to improbably survive and you better have a real neat explanation for how thatâs possible. Oh M. Night, when will you realize that your explanations are never as clever as you think they are? Thereâs no âtwistâ here really, simply a reveal, and itâs the equivalent of eating one of those sugar-free, gluten-free, egg-free, dairy-free snack cakes I broke down and ate out of desperation when I was on Weight Watchers. That shit is âfoodâ in the same way that the climax is a âlogical explanation for all this.â Big Pharma is luring sick people to the resort through targeted ads, then arranging these excursions to the wacky time beach in order to test how medicine they secretly slipped into the guestsâ drinks works over decades of life. These sneaky medical breakthroughs are saving hundreds of thousands of peopleâs lives, weâre told, and the scientists offer a moment of silence for each fallen group of unwitting human lab rats after they inevitably die. Because if thereâs one thing the world needs right now, itâs more distrust of pharmaceutical companies and the ethics of modern science! I canât think of one possible reason weâd want to portray molecular biologists, immunologists, and virologists in a positive light right now, can you? When will those assholes get off their high horses and stop being universally trusted and beloved by everyone, am I right??Â
My saddest takeaway, tbh, is that this is a stacked international cast, with at least half the roles going to POC - this is the future liberals want, etc etc - and the result is THIS.
Did I Cry? Of course not.
Not all is terrible! Itâs a beautiful movie to look at, because M. Nightâs direction is never the problem, but combined with the script, the acting, and the absurd narrative leaps needed to make this story make even a little bit of sense, the whole thing turns into a mess. Unfortunately, getting Old with M. Night is less âleisurely retirement at a plush resort in Floridaâ and more ârancid can of Ensure and a poop-choked pair of Depends.â
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